I think you effectively did when you note that the only thing that went wrong for Theo and his Cubbies was the Dempster deal. They made an awful lot of mistakes this year, and the team is, at least for the time being, worse off because of them.

Despite the worse record this year, I'd bet the Astros beat the Cubs back to the playoffs, even with being moved to the more difficult AL West.

Let's not go nuts here. Both of them are eons away with the way it's going. This year's Astros team might be in the conversation when you talk about the worst teams of all time. Both of them are going to have fairly high picks for the next few years, so they need to get some very good talent with those picks. And yes, the 10/5 players the Cubs had ended up hurting their rebuild by being a bit too loyal to the team.
I found the Cubs approach to building their team very odd. They traded several players and got a bunch of AAAA guys. They will really need to step up to bring better talent in.

The Cub fan in my office was depressed when they got him. He said he was a Cub killer would continue to be so now that he was on the Cubs. For his first several starts with the Cubs, he lived up to that expectation.

The Cub fan in my office was depressed when they got him. He said he was a Cub killer would continue to be so now that he was on the Cubs. For his first several starts with the Cubs, he lived up to that expectation.